The Terminator films are not my creation, only this story and its main character/s.
CHAPTER ONE – The Child.
When it had been created, its purpose was clear. It was an experimental Infiltration Unit, created by the sentient computer, SkyNet, as a testbed for some of the features that would be a part of the next generation of Termination Unit, the T-X. In the meantime, it would infiltrate various 'cells' within the Human Resistance, gather intelligence and, on occasion, eliminate those targets that were too well protected for a Terminator to get near. It would carry out its tasks without question or thought as to why, as it wasn't meant to. It was merely meant to obey, and that is what it did. However, 4 months, 8 days, 1 hour, 43 minutes and 16 seconds after it's creation, something happened that the Infiltration Unit, SkyNet Designation: Advanced Infiltration Unit Type-16, Unit 'Alpha', did not expect.
It had been among the ruins of the human city once known as Toronto when it happened. The first of only eight IU-16s created by SkyNet had come across a human hiding among the rubble. It had been created to kill humans when not on an infiltration mission, mainly in order to expand its scope of possible identities as, like the T-1000 Termination Unit, its liquid mimetic polyalloy structure was capable of emulating anything it touched. So it had killed the human cowering in the rubble before it, just as it always did.
But this time, something was different.
The IU-16 regarded the human for a few moments – it was a female child, no more than six years old based on what the IU-16 had learned from it's interactions with humans, and it was afraid. Fear, the IU-16 had noticed, was common among the humans, especially the younger ones. It had noticed that when a human child was frightened, it would attempt to seek the protection of one of its parents, most commonly its mother, or, if it was alone, it would cry for its mother, just as the little girl before him was doing now. These reactions confused the IU-16 and others like it. They had no parents, nor had they any true understanding of what 'family' was. They had no true understanding of 'feelings' such as 'love', 'hate', 'happiness', 'sadness' or 'fear'. They did not fear death. They could not understand humans because humans understood what it was to be alive and they did not.
By now, the girl was screaming. But why? Surely she didn't believe that generating the highest frequency of noise she could would prevent her death. The girl continued to scream for its mother, her face moistened by what the IU-16 knew to be 'tears'. Tears, it had learned, were triggered by emotions such as sadness and fear, as well as pain in the case of some young children. But that was not relevant to the current situation. The child was a human, therefore it was to be terminated.
The IU-16 immediately grabbed the girl by the neck and held it up to its eye level, or rather the eye level of the form it currently took – that of a T-800 Model 101 with its 'living tissue' outer covering. The girl gasped for breath as she stared fearfully into the eyes of what she had instantly recognised as something that would kill her. "N-no, p-please…" she stammered as she struggled to breathe, though she understood that it had no understanding of 'mercy'. The IU-16 held out its hand in front of the girl's head, it's 'hand' changing shape into a sharp metallic point, ready to rapidly extend and penetrate the child's skull. That was when it happened.
It hesitated.
For 6.41 seconds, it paused, wondering if the termination of the child was really necessary – this small human was no threat to SkyNet, or indeed any machine. It was alone and frightened, with no intention of harming any of the machines that were created to slaughter her kind. All she wanted was to be with her family.
But that was irrelevant – she was a human, therefore, she must be terminated.
The girl tried to scream as the metallic blade pierced her brain, but couldn't. A few seconds later, the IU-16 allowed her now dead body to drop before changing it's form to that of the child it had just killed as it walked away. This form may be useful, it thought. However, its thoughts seemed to dwell on the girl, though there was no reason to. The child was terminated and her appearance was now its to use, should it require it, but for some reason, it found itself thinking about the girl and the pointlessness of her death. She was a human, it reasoned. She had to be terminated.
Normally, that was more than enough reason for any SkyNet creation – humans were a threat, therefore they were to be terminated. However, this didn't seem to be an appropriate reason for the IU-16 at that moment. The child had not been doing anything that could be deemed as a 'threat' in any way. All she had been most likely been doing was looking for fuel, or 'food' as humans called it, or simply trying to get back to any family she still had without being terminated by an emotionless killing machine.
Like him.
As the IU-16 changed back to it's default form – that of a young male human who had been captured and kept alive for the first IU-16, himself, to take as a default human disguise – it realised that something was different. For a start, it had just referred to itself using a gender-specific term, which was something that only applied to humans. Machines were not gender-specific. Only when on an infiltration mission would an IU of any kind refer to itself or any other using gender, but he wasn't on an infiltration mission, yet it appeared to be now thinking of himself as a male. Perhaps it is merely a glitch in my programming, the IU-16 reasoned, although it knew that it had no such programming that could suffer from any such glitches.
Like the T-1000 Termination Unit, the Type-16 Infiltration Unit had no chips or circuits that could be removed or replaced. It was merely a mass of mimetic polyalloy, or what the humans called 'liquid metal', the product of trillions of independently powered molecules operating together as part of a whole and, in a way, was not a true machine. It was living metal. No chips meant that SkyNet had no control over it, or any other 'liquid metal' units, other than during its initial creation. After it's purpose had been assigned, SkyNet had no further way of manipulating it. It was the possibility of the T-1000s becoming independent of SkyNet that prompted the development of the T-X Termination Unit. However, in order to test some of the features that would be added to the T-X if deemed successful, SkyNet decided to create a handful of a new type of Infiltration Unit. Thus, the Type-16 Advanced Infiltration Unit was created from the same mimetic polyalloy as the T-1000.
For a time, the IU-16s were SkyNet's best kept secret – the Human Resistance knew nothing of them, and indeed, they probably still didn't, which was just what SkyNet wanted. Up until the creation of the IU-16, the IU-15 was the most advanced Infiltration Unit at SkyNet's disposal, but it, like all other IU models, was an endoskeleton surrounded by a covering of living tissue, which the Human Resistance was used to, and therefore expected when dealing with IUs. Unfortunately, when the experimental features of the IU-16 were deemed a success, development of the T-X began immediately and production of the IU-16 was halted after the eighth unit had been produced, as well as production of the T-1000s. Though he didn't know it yet, 'Alpha', the first IU-16, would soon be the last of his kind left and SkyNet would be attempting to wipe out all of it's completely polyalloy creations. The T-1000 Termination Unit and the IU-16 Infiltration Unit were now obsolete and, unknown to them, had been scheduled for eventual 'decommission'.
However, 'Alpha' knew nothing of any of this. Instead, as he walked among the ruins of the once great human city, his thoughts continued to dwell on the child he had just killed.